Color, Color, Color

In the attempt to move farther away from the college years of unframed posters, I'm desperately grabbing for a room/apartment with a cohesive color palette to work with in order to establish a cohesive concept.

The first one that has appealed to me is this palette, "Eroded Brights" from design-seed.com

It's bright, fun and just a touch girly, which is fine since I have a female roommate.  I think combined with some silver and black it's more mature but not too reserved/mature, we are only in our early/mid-20s

My second choice would be this palette, "Pear Brights" also from design-seed.com

Still nice and bright but slightly more gender-neutral when it comes to the overall palette - pretty easy to tell that I gravitate towards blues, huh?

The goal would be to have this overall color palette in the family room and then carry aspects of it throughout the kitchen and bathroom so the spaces all flow together instead of being choppy.  I don't need my apartment to feel any smaller then it actually is!

What do you think?  Too bright for you? More neutrals?  Remember I'm working with a very neutral apartment base, so these will be more in fabrics and accents that I choose (hoping not to paint too many walls since that will be a pain to repaint whenever I move out...)

Unpacked at last!

Finally got all the tubs and boxes unpacked so here are some photos for you to enjoy.

Essentially this is the apartment at "stage 1"  I've figured out (more or less) where to put all the furniture and the basic layout of everything and will start to tweak and improve upon what I have.

My Bedroom

Kitchen - hard to believe I got all the dishes to fit!

Family Room (excuse the darkness, there's no overhead light and I shot these at night)

The Bathroom

Again, I'm working with only what I brought with me so nothing new has been acquired yet.  Still working on figuring out what to buy or DIY to save a pretty penny :)  But really, right now I'm just celebrating the fact that I have no more boxes to unpack!

Gotta love a list

Taking a page out of Young House Love's book, I decided that in order to help me focus I should come up with a room - by - room list of things to accomplish or what I would like to do with each room.  Since I am a renter I can't do any major changes ( I would like my security deposit back), but here are my plans for making the apartment my own, and still getting my deposit when I move:

The Family Room

• Hang Curtains - I have curtains I would like to use, I just need to hang them
• Build/create a bar area
• Devise a better pantry system - since there's very little space in the kitchen our pantry and food storage needs to be in this room
• Baskets for blanket storage - instead of the (clean) trash cans I've been keeping them in
• Slipcover for sofa and arm chair
• Recover pillows
• Gallery wall
• Add some plant life

The Kitchen/ our "Galley"

• Spice storage above the burners of the stove
• Storage above the fridge (shelves?)
• Storage above the washer/dryer
• Organize under the sink
• Go through dishes (again) to create more space to move some food storage to the kitchen
• Paint the back wall or stencil?
• Add some type of back splash

The Bathroom

• Paint the walls - when I first saw this, the other renters had painted it a wonderful blue so I was sad to see the tan
• Devise some sort of towel storage
• Hang shower curtain high (and get new, taller shower curtain)
• Hang art
• Above toilet storage

The Balcony

• Add lighting, perhaps solar lights?
• Seating is a must, currently scouring Craigslist for wicker furniture that is in need of some loving
• Rug
• Outdoor coffee table
• More plants

*I haven't forgotten the bedroom, but I'm attempting to whip up an inspiration board and take a better "in progress" picture to convey some of my ideas.

So who else has a list of what needs to be done around their place?  Any other renters out there who struggle to make their place "homey" while still getting their deposit back?  

Blank Slate

Moving day finally happened, it's here and boy did everything move quickly!  From the time everyone showed up to the time we were all sitting among boxes in the new place eating pizza was a little under 3 hours!

More on the Moving story later but for now I wanted to show you some "blank slate" pictures of the apartment.

When you walk in you are immediately greeted by a large family room with a wood burning fireplace and a door that leads out to the balcony.  Right now I'm thinking that the nook to the left of the fireplace will be perfect for a bookcase and the nook on the right will be great for the tv (the cable hook up is also there)

This is the other side of the family room.  Currently I'm thinking of a big gallery wall on that large white space.

Here you can see a picture of our front door as well as the hallway off the family room.  The first door on the right leads to the kitchen, the second door to the bathroom and the door at the end of the hallway is one of the two bedrooms

We are affectionately calling this kitchen the galley because it is so tiny - the door to the fridge doesn't even open all the way.

Second half of the kitchen, yes kitchen storage will definitely be an issue, I'm looking forward to that challenge.

Bathroom - again, not a ton of storage but not a tiny size like the kitchen

 Bedroom 1

Closet and door of bedroom 1

Bedroom 2 - apparently I needed the flash to be on...

Closet and door of bedroom 2

Outdoor Balcony - quite large and spacious

Other half of outdoor balcony.  Con of the balcony - that black metal floor is going to get really warm in the summer, time to look for an outdoor rug!